Hunters,
We are entering 2025 with an initiative to focus on performance, fixes, and improving player trust. Today, we want to tackle some concerns regarding new features and overall game balance, as well as how we will address these issues in coming updates.
From Update 2.3 onwards, we plan to reverse some previous decisions around the power creep of certain weapons and Traits, as well as fixing some long-standing issues that impact gameplay, and more. This will go hand in hand with additional focus on stability, bug fixing, and performance improvements for an overall smoother experience.
Here are some of the reverts you can expect from update 2.3:
- The Lightfoot Trait no longer allows for silent crouching for solo Hunters.
- Revive Bolts are now Scarce, and can only be looted from dead Hunters and come with less ammunition (we plan on revising them further in future updates).
- The Krag will now have slightly reduced extra ammo capacity (from 12 to 10; used to be 8 last year) and goes up in cost to 450 Hunt Dollars to encourage more arsenal variety.
- The Uppercut will be made cheaper again, dropping to 310 Hunt Dollars.
- The Surefoot Trait will no longer have faster crouch speed and will go up in cost to 6 Upgrade Points
- It will now require three Bear Traps to kill an enemy Hunter, allowing players to avoid using a single Tool slot choice which allows for easy insta-kill trap setups on their own without using explosive barrels, extra traps found in the world, or the Frontiersman Trait.
- Melee Tools will cause more damage to Targets, and there are more in-world melee weapons spawned near Boss Target lairs again.
- Pull-out damage from stuck projectiles is back up to a meaningful level of damage. We’ll talk about how this affects Traits like Blademancer and Berserker at a later time.
We’ve also spent a lot of time on fixing some of our more challenging, long-standing bugs:
- We refactored the poison damage system to prevent issues around the effects not disappearing correctly.
- Hanging chains and other sound traps will no longer block attacks during combat.
- Concertina wire should no longer damage players through walls and ceilings.
Lastly, here are some of our upcoming changes you can expect in 2.3:
- The Fast Fingers Trait has been added to the Martini-Henry IC1 and Maynard Sniper families.
- The Bolt Thrower Trait now also works for the Bomb Lance and Bomb Launcher.
- Weekly Challenges are now coming in random weekly sets to reduce the chance of individual weapons dominating entire weeks.
- The Conduit Trait now gives solo Hunters double the stamina reward and progresses two Clue steps with one interaction.
- The Vetterli has been given an improved rate-of-fire in ADS with the Iron Eye Trait, while the Centennial’s rate-of-fire has been reduced slightly at the same time.
- Players can now disarm and pick up Dark Dynamite Satchels, storing them back in their inventory (if they have a free slot).
As we said last year, Update 2.3 will be lighter on new content and features as we focus on actioning more bug fixes and improvements. We will be focusing on stability, performance, and more, ultimately raising the quality of your gameplay experience significantly.
Moving forward through 2025, we will still be bringing unique new Events, but at a lower frequency and with a priority on delivering those key improvements over new content.
We strongly feel that this is the best path forward as we consolidate and stabilize the game. We will share more on the contents of Update 2.3 and future Events as we draw closer.
– Hunt: Showdown 1896 team